YMCA attends World Non-Formal Education Forum
A delegation from YMCA joined more than 400 participants to attend the first World Non-Formal Education Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 9-11 December 2019. YMCA supported the event by facilitating a number of workshops and worked to finalise a position paper on non-formal education with its fellow Big 6 organisations.
The team arrived in Brazil looking to position YMCA as a key leader in promoting non-formal education worldwide. Alina Pop from YMCA Romania led a workshop on quality standards within youth work and Mary Antelo from YMCA Spain facilitated a session on integrating newcomers through non-formal education. Each session was attended by more than 50 participants and gave YMCA the platform to share more about its work and best practice.
Friends from the Scouts later joined YMCA representatives for a co-facilitated innovation lab geared toward education and policy reform. Participants will carry this work forward into the future to deliver a set of guidelines to support other youth organisations in advocating for better policies in the area of education where they live.
Finally, representatives from YMCA, YWCA, Scouts, Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, and Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Association, together known as the Big 6, met with the UN Youth Envoy to finalise a join position paper on non-formal education. The joint position of the Big 6 alliance aims at drawing more attention to the urgent need to invest in providing educational opportunities that go beyond the formal education system and underscores the importance of non-formal education and learning to tackle the global education crisis.
The World Non-Formal Education Forum is an international platform co-convened by World Scouting, UNICEF, UNFPA and the OSGEY involving more than 70 leading international organisations, youth organisations and UN entities working on non-formal education and youth development. Over the course of three days, the Forum addressed the joint challenges facing the sector and built more support and recognition around the role of non-formal education in the global education agenda. The Forum engaged member organisations of the International Coordination Meeting of Youth Organisations (ICMYO) and the Big 6 group along with other civil society representatives, UN and partner agencies, academics, government representatives, young people, and experts on youth development.
Learn more about the World Non-Formal Education Forum
Read the Big 6 position paper